Afterland

by Lauren Beukes

  Hope stands up and announces, “Sisters, let us pray.”

  “No. None of that. We’ve had enough. Not in here,” the exasperated official shouts over her. But Hope is at her best stealing the spotlight, in her element working the crowd.

  “I’m sorry too, Sisters. Sorry for the grief and the loss in the world. Take each other’s hands. We have all loved, we have all lost. Te suplico. Mothers and daughters and grandmothers and sisters and friends. Te suplico.”

  She’s caught the moment. Everyone holds hands across their rows of seats. And when their group finally reaches the front, the immigration officer stamps their paperwork without even looking at it.

  “Thank you,” she says, reaching through her window to catch Hope’s sleeve. “That was beautiful.”

  44.

  Cole: Losing battles

  It’s a long haul to Atlanta. The Sisters are singing as they thread their way through a spaghetti of highways that squat above the center of the city, heading out for the suburban ring. The farther out they get from Atlanta central, the fancier and more derelict the neighborhoods become. Pretty homes stand against the woods closing in behind them; hopeful lighthouses of civilization, despite the peeling paint, the broken windows, the generous lawns overgrown with kudzu and confetti wildflowers that say no one is coming home. Outside one garage, a weaver’s nest droops from a basketball hoop like a misshapen ball arrested in flight.

  Mila is slumped in her seat, asleep, her head tipped onto her chest at an awkward angle, which reminds Cole of the long drives they used to take when she was a toddler, and would only succumb to the horror of taking a nap if it was in a moving vehicle. She and Devon did a lot of driving back then, exploring back roads and neighborhoods, until the baby resentfully passed out. But when she tries to tilt her back into a better position, like she used to, once upon a time, Mila grumbles sleepily and shrugs away.

  On the radio, a woman croons a cover of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.” Under her breath, Faith is singing along, drumming in time on the steering wheel.

  They haven’t passed another car in miles, and now dusk is sneaking in between the pale stripes of the trees, sketching in the shadows of the forest, filling up the empty houses from inside. But the streetlights stand mute. The windows stay blind. If there are squatters here, they’re on the down-low.

  The forest thickens, constricting around the road, pressing up against the park fence, and finally they turn, at a low stone wall toward a boom gate and a security hut with the cool blue of LCD lighting in the window, a beacon in the spreading gloom. Or a will-o’-the-wisp to lead you astray. Mila stirs at the absence of motion, exactly like when she was little, scrubbing at her eyes with the back of her hand. “Are we there yet?”

  “Somewhere.” Cole reads the sign. “Benfield Academy.”

  They trundle up the sweeping driveway under a canopy of foliage, up to the campus, hundred-year-old buildings with wooden frame windows and walls covered with ivy, or more likely kudzu, Cole thinks. The creeping scourge of Georgia.

  She’s impressed with the Church’s knack for repurposing: ayahuasca retreat, fancy private school, even the bar and theater back in Memphis—although Hope and Compassion elected not to go ahead with that one, thanks to the roaches and the residue of sin.

  At least this place has semiprivate rooms, blessed be, spoiled rich-kid upmarket boarding school, with only two beds in each one. They don’t have to share, which means if Mila has another nocturnal episode…

  Wet dreams, boo, perfectly normal for boys. Not like you to euphemism.

  She knows that perfectly well, thank you, ghostguy. It’s for her own sake. Keeping the words straight in her head. Hope is pressing harder with every Confidance, wanting specifics, names, timelines, exactly what she was feeling at the time. Airing her dirty laundry to cover up the literal iteration of Mila’s stained sheets.

  She lets Mila pick their room, one with the tiniest Juliet balcony, and settles their things.

  “It’s not quite Hogwarts,” she says.

  “Magic is stupid,” mutters Mila, all pubescent charm and sweetness.

  “Here.” She extends a plastic razor. “I picked this up for you at that hotel outside Tulsa.” The pathos of the housekeeping supplies, razors and aftershave and deodorants with names like Prairie and Tusk, along with the toothbrushes and tampons. “Don’t cut yourself!” she calls as Mila shuffles into the bathroom.

  “I wear a Speak, Mom. So no one’s going to see if I cut myself anyway.”

  “Not during dinner, you don’t.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You cut yourself already, didn’t you?”

  “No, I didn’t.” Mila comes out, wiping her face with a towel. Too risky to buy shaving cream, because the Sisters are discouraged from such feminine vanities of the old world as removing body hair. Too bulky to hide, especially when she already has contraband: the sim card from Alicia the realtor, the razor, the $412 she has so far managed to remove from what she thinks of as the Bus Bank. Trying to live up to her virtue name: Sister Patience, sneaking a hand in to tweak out a few bills whenever she gets the chance. Not grabbing the entire bag and running with it—yet. They’re still too far from the coast.

  Mila throws the towel on the bed. “You need to stop treating me like a kid!”

  “You are a kid.”

  “I’m thirteen. In, like, a few weeks. I can make my own decisions.”

  Cole presses her fingers into her temples. “Not all of them, tiger. I’m doing my best. We’re nearly there. One rung closer on the ladder to escape.”

  “Please don’t mangle the Church’s sayings for one of your dumb jokes.”

  “But this is a joke. It’s a con job. All this dogma, the Repentnals, none of this is for real. Don’t get too deep. We’re undercover, remember?”

  “Whatever, Mom.”

  “We don’t say ‘whatever’ in this family.”

  “Weird. Because I just did.” She stalks out.

  She’s not at dinner. And not at prayers afterward, and Cole is starting to fret, keeping her hands busy, sitting sewing with Temperance and Generosity and Chastity in the teachers lounge that looks out over the gardens. It’s among their sacred tasks, stitching Prayer Cloths, inscribed with names of the dead. “Beloved Father.” Aren’t they all. “In Memory and Love: Christopher.” They will be taken to Miami and blessed by the Mother Inferior herself, and usually Cole finds the work soothing, thinking of Devon as she pulls the gold thread in and out the fabric. But now she’s anxious and her hands ache.

  “She’s a teenager. You should understand that,” Generosity says, patronizing. “She needs some alone time. Fortitude sent her to take an inventory of the rooms, see if there was anything useful. And I’ve got some cereal for her, so she won’t go hungry.”

  “Thank you, Generosity, that’s very kind of you.”

  “We all try our best. She’s a special girl.”

  “She really is, and I don’t say that just because she’s my daughter.” Pointed. It’s not that she’s jealous of the connection that’s sprung up between the two of them, but she is worried about the sway the Hawai‘ian Sister has over Mila. She does not need her kid swigging down any more Kool-Aid at this point.

  Temperance is fidgeting, stitching beside her. Making a right cock-up of the words. Not all Sisters are equal at all Mercies, but she’s trying. Finally, she can’t hold it in anymore.

  “Oh, Patience? I’m so excited for you!”

  “First time in Miami. I know.” She dips the needle in and out. “And we get to see the Mother Inferior. Mila is thrilled. It’s like meeting the Pope.”

  Chastity groans. “Temperance, how could you?”

  “Oh. Oh yes,” Temperance turns scarlet. “Meeting the Mother Inferior. That’s what I meant?”

  Cole lowers her sewing. “What is it, Temperance?”

  “I’m sorry, Gen! I’m so excited for her! I couldn’t help myself.”

  “Cat’s out th
e bag now. You might as well go ahead,” Generosity sighs.

  “Your Mortification!” Temperance beams.

  “That’s not for days yet.”

  “Hope says you’re ready. She says you’re doing so well!”

  “That’s enough, Temperance. You know the procedure.”

  Temperance claps both hands over her mouth, eyes shining. “Sorry. Sorry. I won’t say another word.”

  Wow. Shit. “I don’t know what to say.” Ain’t that the truth.

  “It’s wonderful news, Patience. The best possible thing,” Chastity says. “You’re going to be changed, washed clean, made pure before God.”

  “I can’t wait,” Cole says. But she’s spotted Chastity’s cell phone, the one she uses to revisit her old dating apps as if this is Penance rather than fodder for masturbation. It’s charging on the counter next to the toaster.

  “This is…big. Would you excuse me? I think I need a little alone-time myself.”

  “Oh yes, a chance to reflect!”

  “A walk would help me clear my head. Generosity, if you see Mila, please remind her to brush her teeth.”

  See? I can be a good mother too.

  45.

  Miles: Wolf in Wolf’s Clothing

  Miles prowls through the empty school, scratching at himself through the Apologia. He is so sick of these damn robes, so sick of everything. Sick of missing his dad. In the first weeks after he died, when they were pumping him full of sleeping pills at the army base, he dreamed about him every night, but they were the obvious stress nightmares. Dad, falling off a cliff into a dark ocean. Dad, deconstructing into a swarm of midges, buzzing around Miles’s head. Dad, standing with his back to him. He’d grab him, get him to turn around, but there was no face where his face should have been. Just a smudge, a forgetting.

  More recently, the dreams have been more peaceful, so he feels both better and worse when he wakes. The two of them, sitting side by side on the big outdoor sofa on their porch back home, their phones out, texting each other, a favorite game before the Manpocalypse.

  He fantasizes for a moment that it’s real—that his father is waiting for him somewhere, that he and his mom might be able to stop running.

  He heads past the old hall, saints smiling at him from stained glass windows, through another courtyard. He imagines how many other boys walked this path. Boys who were worried about their grades and girls and getting onto the football team and bullies and friends. Boys who probably thought they were losers, boys who worried they didn’t mean anything. Boys who weren’t supposed to somehow save their species, who weren’t being hunted by governments, who weren’t the reason that their mother was a fugitive stuck on the wrong side of the planet. Each boy with just one perfect, normal life. He grieves for them all.

  He crosses the courtyard into a set of classrooms, strangled by ivy. The first one is locked. The second opens into an art room. The walls are lined with school projects mounted on easels. A still life of fruit in oils, a series of self-portraits split down the middle between photo-realistic and impressionist fantasy. Here’s a boy who is half-cyborg, here’s one with a hollow skull full of sky on the left side of his head. It’s unnerving. What would he paint? Half-girl, half-boy. The Speak and the veil of the Apologia on one side—calm, contained. The other side would be real. Angry. He twists his face to mimic the expression.

  A poster hangs on the wall with the school pledge.

  I, a young man of Benfield Academy

  Promise to persevere in the face of difficulty

  Help others without expecting a reward

  Be brave and protect those who need my protection

  I will be polite and kind

  I will keep my promises

  I will cheerfully do the work that I am appointed to do

  I will honor God and do my duty for my country

  And I will find the courage to become the man I was meant to be.

  Miles finds that he’s crying. It’s the weight of it—the emptiness of the room, the ghosts of the boys who should have been in here. It’s the dreams of his dad. It’s the knowledge that no one is ever going to be around to show him what he’s supposed to be.

  He notices a backpack, tucked under one of the desks against the wall. It might once have been yellow, but it’s faded to cream. An anime keyring dangles from the zip. He unzips it. Balled up inside is a pair of gray shorts, a white button-up shirt, and a tie.

  He knows he shouldn’t. But fuck it, he says in his head, relishing the word. He pulls off the Apologia, and puts on the shirt and shorts. They’re creased and stiff, but he doesn’t care. He feeds the tie through the collar and tries to work out how to knot it. He remembers watching his dad doing this sometimes, when he had to give a lecture or presentation. There was something about a rabbit and a fox, running around a tree. He twists the thin end experimentally.

  There’s a gasp and a clatter at the door. He whirls around to see Generosity silhouetted against the light. She’s dropped a bowl of Fruit Loops, scattering them over the floor.

  They stare at each other for seconds that seem to stretch into years.

  Generosity picks up the bowl. “I thought you might be hungry.” She avoids looking at him.

  Miles scrabbles for his robes on the floor. Oh no, oh no, oh no. His mind races for an explanation, but there’s nothing he can say to excuse the sheer fact of his body. He’ll be sent back to Ataraxia, or someplace worse. He’ll never see his mom again.

  “Oh, Mila,” Generosity says. “I knew it. I knew you were like me.”

  “I…what?”

  She walks over, pulls him into a smothering hug. “I was four when I started putting on my brothers’ clothes. I insisted everyone call me a different name. When puberty hit me, I started binding my breasts. It felt like my body was betraying me, like it belonged to someone else. I thought if I willed it, I could force the world to see me as I saw myself, as a boy.”

  Miles feels like the conversation has veered wildly off course. He keeps his face blank to cover his confusion.

  “But it’s wrong, Mila. I see that now. We carry Eve’s sins, and we can’t escape that by wishing we were different. We have to learn to ignore the voice of Satan in our hearts, and listen to God. He has made us women, and we must accept our suffering. For that is His will.”

  She grips his shoulders. “I was lucky. I found the Church before I could save up for surgery. I was so close to mutilating the body God had made me. As it was, I poisoned myself with hormones, Mila. But I’ll help save you from all of that.”

  “Oh, I…um. Thank you.”

  “I’m sorry if this is hard to hear, daughter Mila. But don’t you see—God wanted me to know your secret. We can help each other. We can keep each other on the righteous path.”

  “Blessed be His will,” says Miles, automatically. Even though he’s scrambling to keep up with what she’s saying, that’s not what he believes. It’s okay to be who you feel you are inside, not what you look like outside, he wants to tell her. But maybe he’s wrong. Maybe he’s been wrong this whole time. Has he? He’s so confused and ashamed and scared because she caught him out, and he wants to correct her, but that would be the end of everything, and even though he wants an end—the certainty of it, not having to worry anymore—maybe telling her wouldn’t be the end. It would be the start of something even more unknown and out of his control.

  “Amen,” she says, folding him into another rib-cracking hug.

  “My stomach hurts,” he says.

  “Let’s find you something to eat then,” she replies.

  46.

  Billie: Visitation Rights

  The lake below the highway is as wide as an ocean, no end in sight. On this side of the road, glittering apartment blocks of steel and glass, and down there, an oversize Ferris wheel on the boardwalk. The Chi, that’s what they call it. Pronounced “shy,” like gun-shy, or shy to show your fucking face or reply to your damn emails, you asshole, Cole, you fucking asshole.


  The first thing they did this morning was check for new messages from her sister M.I.A. Zara wouldn’t let her hold the phone or even touch it, so she had to look over her shoulder, reach over to tap in her password. She covered the screen when she did. Billie isn’t stupid. But there are no replies. It’s like Cole is trying to get her killed. She better not be a no-show. She better be waiting for them at Tayla’s with her bags packed and the mother of all apologies for everything she has put Billie through.

  She’ll have to keep her calm, talk sense into her. It’s not like Zara’s going to shoot Cole in the head in front of Miles. That would be bad for all of them. She’s an asset, the mother of the child. Not a witness. Not a liability. Not like poor Nelly the hedgehog.

  It’s going to be up to her to keep Cole from going apeshit, to impress upon her how dangerous Zara is and how it’ll be best for everybody if she shuts the hell up and does what she’s told.

  There’s another fantasy here. Maybe they can gang up, take out Zara. Get the money, somehow, and ride off into the sunset.

  Don’t you see how I’m up against the wall here, Cole? Another song in her head. Look what you made me do.

  “I thought Lincoln Park was the name of a band,” she says as they take the turnoff.

  “No,” Zara says. The best conversationalist.

  They cruise down a tree-lined avenue, following the instructions of the map app, and Zara slows the car down to a crawl. Your destination is on the right, the app declares helpfully.

  “Is that it? Park View? Swanky cow.”

  “Yes.” Zara drives up the street to take an empty bay. It takes her a couple of tries to get into the spot. Maybe her ripped-off ear has affected her ability to parallel park. It’s definitely killed any chance of wearing matching earrings ever again.